ArticleThe Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry2023
Is the narrative the message? The relationship between suicide-related narratives in media reports and subsequent suicides.
Article in The Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Our stories matter: a mixed methods survey of lived and living experience perspectives of media and public communication of suicide in Australia.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- 'Fair and balanced?': quality of suicide-related reporting on major US cable news networks.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2025Article
- Coverage of suicide deaths in newspapers and perceptions of suicide loss survivors on reporting: Insights from a community survey in India.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Changes in Media Reporting Quality and Suicides Following National Media Engagement on Responsible Reporting of Suicide in Canada: Changements de la Qualité des reportages dans les médias sur les suicides suite à l'engagement des médias nationaux à la déclaration responsable du suicide au Canada.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2024Observational
- Best practice for integrating digital interventions into clinical care for young people at risk of suicide: a Delphi study.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- A machine learning approach to detect potentially harmful and protective suicide-related content in broadcast media.PloS one · 2024Article
- Suicide Assessment and Prevention in Bipolar Disorder: How Current Evidence Can Inform Clinical Practice.Focus (American Psychiatric Publishing) · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesWhen journalists report on the details of a suicide, the way that they contextualize the meaning of the event (i.e. the 'narrative') can have significant consequences for readers. The 'Werther' and 'Papageno' narrative effects refer to increases and decreases in suicides across populations following media reports on suicidal acts or mastery of crises, respectively. The goal of this study was to investigate the impact of these different narrative constructs on subsequent suicides.
methodsThis study examined the change in suicide counts over time in Toronto, Canada. It used latent difference score analysis, examining suicide-related print media reports in the Toronto media market (2011-2014). Articles (
resultsLatent difference score longitudinal multigroup analyses identified a dose-response relationship in which the trajectory of suicides following harmful 'Werther' narrative reports increased over time, while protective 'Papageno' narrative reports declined. The latent difference score model demonstrated significant goodness of fit and parameter estimates, with each group demonstrating different trajectories of change in reported suicides over time: (χ
conclusionOur findings support the notion that the 'narrative' matters when reporting on suicide. Specifically, 'Werther' narratives of suicides in celebrities and suicides in non-celebrities where the methods were described were associated with more subsequent suicides while 'Papageno' narratives of survival and crisis mastery without depictions of suicidal behaviours were associated with fewer subsequent suicides. These results may inform efforts to prevent imitation suicides.
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